Miki Kuusi, CEO and co-founder of Wolt.
Wolt
Wolt, an extended grocery and retail food delivery app, raised $ 530 million, trying to take Amazon.
The company’s six-year financing round was led by ICONIQ Capital, which also invested in Airbnb, Uber, Alibaba and Zoom. This brings the total investment in the company to $ 856 million. Wolt, who did not disclose his latest assessment, said he would use the money to “continue to expand beyond restaurants.”
Miki Kuusi, who founded Wolt in 2014 in Helsinki, told CNBC: “Our mission is to provide local restaurants and other brick and mortar operators with the tools they need to provide their customers with a more e-commerce experience. better than what massive overseas competitors can do today. “
He added: “We are huge believers that the next wave of e-commerce will go from delivery in the same week and on the same day to delivery in the next 30 minutes as standard. That’s what we focus on building in all markets, starting with the restaurant. ”
Rapid growth
When Wolt launched in Helsinki in 2015, it had only 10 restaurants on the platform and a small handful of downloads. By 2016, Wolt had around 100,000 app users and 450 restaurants.
Today, Wolt boasts over 10 million users in 129 cities in 23 countries. It is said to have 27,000 restaurant and retail partners, 50,000 couriers and 2,000 employees.
While Amazon is huge in the US and many other countries, it is not as well established in some parts of Europe and large areas of Asia. In fact, the technology giant has online stores dedicated to only about 17 countries around the world.
Amazon launched its first Nordic online store in Sweden in October last year under the domain name Amazon.se, but there is no equivalent in Norway and Finland. This means that customers there must make purchases through Amazon stores in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom (Amazon.co.uk).
But while Wolt seems to be taking care of Amazon, Amazon is also entering Wolt’s turf: restaurant deliveries.
Amazon invested in Deliveroo in London, leading a $ 575 million round of financing in the company in May 2019 in exchange for a 16% stake. Deliveroo has also started delivering food in recent months as the coronavirus pandemic makes people think twice about leaving their homes.
Amazon also sells food on its platform at supermarkets such as Whole Foods, as well as Morrisons and Booths in the UK
Capital increase during coronavirus
Wolt’s Kuusi said the company took less than three weeks to close the new round of financing.
“We went from the first calls to signing a deadline in about two and a half weeks,” he said.
Tiger Global, DST, KKR, Prosus, EQT Growth and Coatue have joined as new investors. Existing investors 83North, Highland Europe, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, EQT Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners also participated.
Kuusi is also the founder of the European technology event company Slush. Slush went from a gathering of 300 people in Helsinki in 2008 to one of the world’s largest technology events – attended by more than 30,000 people each year before the coronavirus pandemic.